Area digs out
Brandy Lee clears snow from the front of The Coffee House on Monday, January 5, 2009 in Gallup, N.M. Gallup and the surrounding area received nearly a foot of snow on Sunday and Monday morning. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — A little snow is good. A lot of snow is not good.

That’s basically how it was in the area as people spent Monday adapting their schedules to the major snowstorm that swept through Gallup this weekend.

County schools were canceled, but it appears that most of the schools will be in session on today, although some have a two-hour delay because of road conditions.

Esther Macias, assistant superintendent for the Gallup McKinley Public School District, said classes have been called off today at Gallup High School to enable teachers a chance to clean up their rooms because of damage caused by a broken pipe during the Christmas holiday.

By Monday afternoon, she said, roads within the city limits were looking good enough for city schools would be back in session on Tuesday. As for the county roads, that was still up in the air yesterday afternoon and Macias said there was a possibility that some county schools may be closed for Tuesday as well because of local road conditions.

Post office carriers were on their rounds as usual, probably facing at the most a little delay in getting around the snow.

Companies that distributed supplies in Gallup also saw delays or in a few cases, like the Pepsi distributors, deciding to postpone distribution for a day until the roads were in better shape.

The main roads throughout Gallup stayed clear throughout Sunday and Monday while many of the secondary roads remained snowpacked until city crews had a chance to get to them late Monday morning or early in the afternoon.

Stan Henderson, director of public works for the city, said city crews were called out at 7 a.m. Sunday and worked throughout the day and night. They were still out working on some streets Monday afternoon.

“We have a priority system,” he said, explaining that is why the main roads through town were given top priority.

When these were cleared, the crews went to those roads that had secondary priority.

But because the storm kept putting snow on the ground throughout Sunday and into the night, the city’s four trucks had to give most of their attention on the primary roads. He added that one of the city’s trucks went down on Sunday and a mechanical crew had to be called in to repair it.

Weather wreaked havoc on roads over the weekend, causing some 75 accidents in and around Gallup. Gallup Police reported 31 car wrecks for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, while Gallup District N.M. State Police reported 32 wrecks and McKinley County Sheriff's Department reported 12. Of the 32 handled by state police, five included injuries, according to N.M. State Police Capt. Darren Soland. Three of the reports made by MCSO included injuries. Gallup Police Department did not know Monday morning how many of its wrecks included injuries.

City officials have been reviewing weather forecasts and feel that the worst is over, at least for this storm.

“According to the long-range forecasts, we should be seeing big blue skies for the next 10 days,” Henderson said.

Ed McCombs, who came to Gallup Monday afternoon from Diné College in Tsaile said the reservation roads were slick, but that crews were in the process of grading them and removing the snow.

The worst area, he said, was around Crystal, which was icy in spots. As for the road between Gallup and Window Rock, the snow had turned to slush by Monday afternoon.

County crews started work on the roads late Sunday or early Monday morning after the storm was over.

“With the type of equipment we have, it doesn’t make sense to put down cinders while the storm is going on,” said Doug Decker, press information officer for the county. “It would just be a waste.”

No county roads have been closed down, and crews worked throughout Monday to remove snow from as many of the county roads as possible.

County emergency management officials watched the situation on Monday to determine if emergency centers needed to be set up anywhere in the county to allow places for motorists to stay until the road conditions improved, but no centers were deemed to be necessary.

Decker said no 911 calls have been received from people needing help because of lack of medicine or other emergency problems.

“We did receive some phone calls from people asking for help clearing snow from their private driveways and we had to explain that we could only plow public roads,” Decker said.

He said reports indicate that this was a “weird storm,” dumping most of the snow on Gallup and then heading in a northeastern direction through Thoreau.

While Ramah received snow, it wasn’t as much as Gallup and once the storm hit Thoreau, it headed in a northerly direction, hardly hitting Albuquerque and bypassing Santa Fe altogether, hitting Taos instead.

The county public school board meeting, scheduled for Monday evening, was canceled but county officials said Tuesday’s county commission meeting will be held as scheduled.

A second storm will slam into the Northwest on Tuesday.

Heavy rain was expected along the Pacific Northwest coast, with several inches of snow possible further inland over the Northern Rockies. Strong winds are also anticipated across the region throughout the day.

High pressure will provide mostly sunny skies for most of the Southwest, except for the mountains of Colorado and Utah, which will instead see clouds and a few inches of snow.

Staff writer Phil Stake contributed to this report